Cristian Mungiu has been a leading light in the so-called Romanian New Wave, a breakthrough in national cinema over the past ten years or so. The director’s work, including Graduation, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, and Tales From The Golden Age, has earned him countless awards, including a Palme D’Or, Best Screenplay, and Best Director awards from Cannes. Mungiu’s thoughtful, low-key, mildly satiric films do not aim at international appeal. Instead, they find universal themes in stories focused on his home country and its problems, and his latest feature is no exception. R.M.N. is the acronym used for Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI in the Romanian language, and the film is intended as a diagnostic scan of certain problems that lurk beneath the surface of Romanian society.
The story takes place in a small town in the province of Transylvania, present-day but placed a few months before the Covid-19 pandemic to avoid complicating the plot with quarantine restrictions. It opens with a brief introductory scene that offers vague foreshadowing: a little boy walking to school is startled by a horrible sight, unspecified and unseen by the audience, and runs back home in a panic. The scene seems a stark contrast to the apparently friendly, benign reality of the town. The only sign of conflict in the early part of the film is an angry response to an insulting comment about Gypsies – but it is a hint that there may be cracks in the town’s peaceful façade.
Mungiu, in a statement at the film’s release, offered some background that explains his choice of setting. Transylvania is a multi-ethnic province with a history of being a disputed territory, resulting in the region being populated by both Romanians and Hungarians, along with a number of Germans and Roma people, and a scattering of others. As a result, the area also contains a mix of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox residents, although few non-Christians. The entirely fictional characters in R.M.N. replicate this population.
“With so many ethnicities,” Mungiu explains, “Transylvania became a favourite playground for populist or nationalist movements of all kinds.” He describes the periodic surge in nationalism, “especially before elections,” sometimes resulting in hostility and street violence, followed by a return to peaceful co-existence. It is an ideal scenario for a director who thrives on complex characters dealing with challenging predicaments or ethical dilemmas, whether personal or political.
The film takes its time introducing the characters, exploring friendships and family relations within the town, and slowly bringing questions of ethnicity into the story. When an unexpected hiring decision is made by the town’s main business, a bakery, it sets off an emotional chain reaction in the community. Tensions subtly and gradually increase, leading ultimately to a highly believable series of confrontations and negotiations. Without identifying clear heroes and villains, the characters are shown to choose sides and attempt to resolve perceived problems. Some do this by attempting to restore peace, others by taking what they see as necessary, aggressive action.
Tolerance wears thin, historical grievances are dragged to the surface, and friendships are stretched to breaking point. What makes it work is that all of it is portrayed with a painful degree of realism. The ensemble cast comes through beautifully, particularly in group scenes such as a contentious town meeting in the final act, resulting in a perfectly naturalistic view of human conflict, tribalism, and well-intentioned but damaging protectiveness. The town meeting scene, central to the story, was presented as real and spontaneous as possible. Mungiu managed it by adopting the highly challenging approach of filming a seventeen-minute-long crowd scene, with over two dozen characters speaking, in a single take.
While the plot is entirely invented, director Mungiu acknowledges that a great deal is drawn from facts, particularly the financial realities of the region. Mungiu gives the example of one dilemma facing the province – the choice between providing employment through gold mining, which damages the environment, or preserving the environment while residents continue to live in poverty. When local poverty leads to workers finding jobs abroad, area businesses consider hiring foreign workers – an unpopular but sometimes necessary choice. Decisions like this help maintain the momentum of the suspense and interpersonal conflict in R.M.N.
R.M.N. deals exclusively with Romania and takes pains to accurately present the area’s diversity, including the local mix of languages. Romanian, Hungarian, and German are all used more or less interchangeably, in addition to a handful of less common languages spoken by a minority, along with English. In recent years, the latter has become the language for most to fall back on where no common language exists. However, the events portrayed are fairly universal. Mungiu commented, “The film is not about a situation in Transylvania, and not even about Romanians, Hungarians, and Germans sharing the same territory. It is set there, but it is also about Russians and Ukrainians, whites and blacks, Sunni and Shia, rich and poor, even tall and short. Whenever there’s a second person in the room, they will be perceived as being from another tribe, and therefore a potential enemy.”
The film manages to capture many of the quandaries and standoffs communities around the world might struggle with – the clash of ideals and expectations and the conflicts arising from identity and membership. It presents these issues in a way that offers sympathy to all, even the apparent villains and bigots. As Mungiu expresses it, the film “brings into question this atavistic need to belong, to identify with one’s ethnic group, with one’s tribe, and to naturally regard others… with reservations and suspicion… It’s a story about intolerance and discrimination, about prejudice, stereotypes, authority, and freedom.” R.M.N. provides an intriguing look at these global issues by confining them to the manageable, small-scale format of a village bakery.
The following are films currently showing online in Cinemas
Those are recommendations for cinema films showing on New Year's Eve. Enjoy watching.
Comments
Post a Comment